"Earlier this week Apple released updated Mac Pros that use Intel's new Penryn processors. Also new is the fact that the standard Mac Pro configuration now comes with eight (instead of four) cores. Of course, what I've been wondering (as I sit here and think about getting a new Mac Pro) is how does the new standard eight-core Mac Pro perform compared to the old high-end Mac Pro? I've gathered Geekbench 2 results for both Mac Pros to find out."

How about, "if you its lost in the noise, it doesn't matter?" Not as catchy, but it has the advantage of actually making logical sense!

Conservation in general is feel-good bunk, but micro-conservation like this is especially-so. The sad truth is this: you'd need extreme, radical conservation steps to decrease energy usage by even 10% in a country like the USA, and given the current energy market, that won't even be a global savings. China and India will just use up whatever excess energy (oil, mainly) production the US and Europe don't. At the time scale of real, measurable, environmental and social impact, it won't change things, not a whit. So why inconvenience yourself over something that doesn't matter? Why feel bad about contributing so imperceptibly to something that is a huge, systematic, global problem?

Entertainingly enough it might even be the case that those people who are environmentally conscious end up hurting the environment in the long run. Conservation is never going to be a solution to the energy problem. By 2025, the increase in global energy use by China and India will have wiped out any conservation-related savings in the West many, many times over. Unless you want to be the guy in charge of telling the developing world that they're stuck being poor, conservation isn't going to work. The only solution is increasing global energy capacity, and believe it or not its the big bad energy companies that are doing the research to achieve that. So paying your tithe Exxon-Mobil may actually contribute more to solving the energy crisis in the long run than turning off your damn laptop instead of letting it sleep.